In Fight for Congress, Democrats Run as 'Team Normal,' Casting G.O.P. as 'Weird'
Representative Greg Landsman’s pitch to the voters of his politically competitive district in Ohio goes something like this: You may once have preferred Republicans, but the leaders of today’s G.O.P. have gotten, well, too weird.
Vote instead, he argues, for someone who is “normal.”
It is a message Mr. Landsman, a Democrat, delivered recently to a gathering of moderate donors in a penthouse in downtown Cincinnati, drawing laughter. It appeared to land equally well at a predominately Black church, where the crowd nodded along. And at a focus group of suburban voters, a former Republican told him she knew exactly what he meant.
He is not the only one. Taking a page from Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee whose “these guys are just weird” quip about the Trump-Vance ticket caught fire on the left, Democrats in competitive congressional contests across the country are trying to make their races a contrast between the normal and the weird.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/us/politics/democrats-republicans-weird.html